


Anywhere You Go

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender, Voltron: Vehicle Voltron
Genre: F/M, Shiro (Voltron)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8736526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: How far would you go for the one you love?  How much of yourself would you sacrifice to the hungry dark?  And what if both of you are asking the same question?  A Voltron mash-up between new and old.  Shiro from Legendary Defender and Lisa from Dairugger (the 80s Vehicle one).  What if the mission to Kerberos had a co-pilot?  Post-Kerberos, pre-show.





	1. Chapter 1

Shiro tells himself she escaped.  He tells himself that the aliens that took his science team never found their ship, never took the rest of the crew.  That she has a story the Garrison and scientific community back on Earth are going to fight believing once she gets safely back home.  He tells himself that she’s safe.  It's been - forever since he lost the Holts and has been on his own.  But she's safe.

He’s clung to that, sworn by that, almost managed to keep himself convinced of that - right up until he steps out onto the familiar sand, tastes the heavy beat of stale blood and offal in the air… and sees a familiar form across the arena.  

“Leese-”  It tears out of his raw throat, the first word he’s spoken in how long, he isn’t sure.  She’s his co-pilot, his long-time roommate, his partner and match in so much else as far back as his early Garrison days - and she’s his best friend.

There’s something wrong when she moves though, when she turns her head over her shoulder from where she’s standing over a fallen alien that looks half dog, half rhino.  Something _not right_ about the jerk and turn of her head, as if there's a record skipping and time isn't folding right, a jerky start and stop of movement that's too segmented to be real.  He registers it a second before her panning eyes find him.  And even across all the distance of the arena he knows those eyes. 

He’s not sure which one of them moves first.  Just that the soles of his boots slip on the sand, that he has to right himself with an extended hand as he bolts for her, that he’s never moved so fast in his life or felt so slow.  She’s drenched in gore down the front of her, as if the rhino-dog had exploded when it died and it registers, briefly, that they’ve been using her the same way they’ve been using him.  For entertainment, for pleasure, careless with their toys and brutal in their games with them.

But then she’s in his arms, squeezing him so tightly with her hold that it threatens to crack his ribs, her nails digging into him even through the rough fabric of his top and the body suit underneath.  He holds her just as tight, pulling, as if he could pull her entirely into his own body, safe in the shelter of his ribs and bones.  He’s choking, tears or words or lack of air, eyesight fogged.  Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knows this is wrong.  He shouldn’t be glad to see her.  Seeing her means she’s here, means she never escaped, means they have her too.  The rage at that flares, something he loses a little more control over every day, and _kill them kill them all_ thrums through his blood, whispers in the corners of his mind, buzzes at the edges of his ears.  He always thought he was a peaceful man - before he came here.

This isn’t what the crowd was expecting; he can hear it in their roar.  He can’t imagine what else they would expect.  She’s his crew, his team, even if she wasn’t already so many other intimate things long before that.  He could never hurt her, never attack her.  Never fight her for the pleasure of blood-thirsty monsters.  It’s not the first time he’s refused a fight - even if it is the first time he has reached out to drag his opponent into his arms.  The guards show up, with their shock prods, their clubs, and he’s done this often enough to know how it goes.  Not this time though.  Not when Lisa is here, not when they’ll hurt her too.

Not when they’ll try to take her away from him.

His finger taps her left shoulder and she makes a sound against his shoulder.  Lisa’s from one of the lunar colonies, she’s taller than most and her bones are reinforced so that she can handle Earth’s gravity.  The top of her head usually comes to his nose.  So much more though, he’s seen her move in their self-defense courses back during their Garrison training.  Her reach is almost as long as his.  When he dives right, she goes left in the same instant.  And the dull throbbing pound in his head spreads out, beats like a _taiko_ through his blood and the guards, for the first time, against the two of them in tandem, don’t stand a chance.  It’s a cornered, animal fueled rage, screaming silently, at being kidnapped, at being forced into this life, at having his freedom, his world, stripped from him, - and its a violent, feral determination that bares ancient fangs and roars from a throat clogged with millennia old ancestors.  Because he’s not going to lose the woman at his side.  He’s not going to let her be lost without him in this hell hole.  Not again.

Once he gets his hands on one of the long spear-like prods, its all over.  They’ve always moved well together, years of cramped shared dorm rooms and close quarters on ships and space stations and even if that feels light years away now, when faced with this reality, the habits and patterns hold.  He knows her space and how her body will move.  Her back presses against his as the last guard falls, hit with something that has the metal of its armored knee exploding, and Shiro sends the head flying hard enough to knock it into the crowd.  The nightmares in the stands roar like a crashing ocean - but all he can hear is the hollow sound of his own panting and the echo of hers filling in the lulls in the raw silence inside his head.

It’s possible he’s just won them a reprieve.  The crowd loves a good show.  He’s learned that much.  The monsters make exceptions for crowd favorites.  It’s also possible he’s just signed both their death warrants.  Because monsters don’t allow insubordination and they certainly don’t allow rebellion.  He doesn’t have a right to decide that for her.  He knows it, feels the stab of it and doesn't have the words to apologize or explain.  She hears him anyway.  She always does.  The misused, rusty sound of her voice near his shoulder is the best thing he’s heard since he came here.

“I missed you too, Takashi.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> he's got her, but for how long? In a new world where nothing is safe and anything precious can be snatched away in an instant, what would you barter away to keep someone safe? How much of what makes you 'you' would you be willing to sacrifice? Sometimes the little mundane things are the only piece of sanity left.

Shiro combs her hair out for her every night.

The aliens let them stay in the same cell together and it tears at him.  He’s well aware its a threat, a chain around his throat they know they can yank to get him to perform any time they like, something vulnerable they can prod at or take from him at any moment.  

But it also means that each night when the lights dim outside the narrow slat of a window that he can curl up around her and feel the tangle of her arms around him and that when the nightmares come there’s a voice in the darkness to lure him back to sanity in the hungry dark.  It means that there are gentle fingers after a day of abuse, an impossible hint of a smile, someone to watch his back, stand at his side and give him support so that he doesn’t fall.  For the first time in he doesn’t know how long he hears his own language and its in a voice that his heart soaks up like a desert.  The monsters let them stay together and he becomes biddable for them.  He hates that, he hates giving in - but it means she gets to stay.  He measures his pride against that and it loses.  Every single time.  It loses.  No matter what they order, he does.  It’s just his human soul. He sells it over and over again, sacrificing pieces of it like Prometheus’ liver.  For her.  So that she can stay.  With him.

Lisa hates it.  She hates being his chain.  She doesn’t have to tell him.  Its in the way she holds him when he’s tossed back into the cell, it’s in the utterly vicious way she fends off any other prisoners that try to take advantage of him in those moments.  It’s in the tears he never hears but wakes up with wet across his face and throat.  How much would he give up for her?  He doesn’t know.  He hasn’t found a limit to it yet.

He’s not the only one they take.  The guards learned fast and when he sees them come in with their guns drawn he knows its not one of his days.  It’s one of hers.  He dreads those days.  His lungs close tight, making it hard to breathe in the murky air and he loses track of time over those days.  Paces the cell every moment until she's brought back and tossed in.  Their fellow prisoners avoid him on those days, huddling in the corners of their shared cell in wide eyed in silence.

The darkness closes in over his mind and pulls screaming parts of it away from him on those days.

Sometimes she comes back to him hurt.  Bruised and bloody, battered, long, moon-pale hands shaking from exhaustion and strain.  Those nights she calls him _‘Shiro’_ and _‘Ro’_ and closes her eyes and hides her face in the corner of his jaw and throat.  She's never enjoyed violence, not even the pretend kind in movies, and when he sees her with split knuckles and blood on her clothes he knows that she loses pieces of herself as well when they take her out into the arena.  He hates those days.  But after a while, he learns to hope for those days. Because there are other days - and those are days he's learned to fear.  Those are the days she comes back to him smelling of cloying, sticky-sweet smoke and bitter, sharp oil.  Those days he can smell ozone on her and her brown eyes stay glassy and helplessly lost looking and none of her muscles seem to move right for her.  It takes hours for him to call her back to herself on those days.  Those are the nights she calls him _‘Takashi’_   with a broken voice and shakes in his arms all night long.  Her fingernails leave cuts on his back and shoulders, where her clinging to him has driven them in.  

The guards get used to simply having to stun him unconscious when they start coming for her after the first few times.

All she ever remembers of those times are pain and things that sound like they're ripped out of one of the old fairy tales that were never cleaned up for children to hear.  Foul potions down her throat, needles and vials and oils, dark inverted purple symbols carved on floors and table tops, something that sucks her out of her body or rips through her and eats her like black lightning.  A witch…

Lisa has the longest black hair.  He could admit he has always been a little fascinated by it, a little fixated.  She uses the short bangs to cover a forehead she considers too high and there are little locks that hang in front of her ears that have always reminded him of the Heian Era.  The rest is just a long flow of black all the way down her back.

Captivity turns it into a clot of knotwork and dried gore.

It starts off when he reaches out to brush it back from her face one night when neither of them can sleep and they’re running through seeing how much of Carroll’s _Jabberwocky_ they can both remember.  His fingers, clumsy, catch.  She winces and mentions wishing she could cut it like his and goes on to the next line.  It ends with her sitting between his raised legs while he slowly, painstakingly, works his fingers through her hair one lock at a time.

After that it becomes a habit, one they both use to reassure themselves.  He gets to hear the little hums of content pleasure he hasn’t heard since before they left Earth.  It’s human and _them_ and normal.

He starts finding the first streaks of white through her black hair the night she’s using his bent leg for support to sit upright after a session with her witch.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> sacrifice goes two ways, a knife that cuts both wielder and receiver. Shiro's not the only one with someone to sell a soul for. He's not the only one with enough of a soul left to sell. How far is too far to go for someone you love? He doesn't get to decide it this time.

He wakes up to the rain.

But it doesn’t rain on the moon.  His mind reminds him of that fact, floating somewhere in the haze between awake and asleep. Yet he can still hear the rain...

Her face is there when he opens his eyes.  Pale as the moon in the night dark sky of her hair.  He tries to raise a hand, to brush that cheek, feel her, reassurance for one of them and he can't remember which one but the moon is impossible to touch from Earth’s surface and his arm is too heavy to lift.

“More” she whispers it and it echoes like ripples as she lifts his head and spills water in drops between his lips.  He swallows convulsively, realizes his throat is dry as dust.  Moon dust.  He’s been there.  He remembers.

“More,” she says again and again the water trickles and he swallows and the world is full of moon dust.  He realizes his head is in her lap, realizes there’s no sky above her.  Forgets what the sky looks like until he looks back at her hair.  He’s never felt so exhausted.  So cold.  So hot.

“I’m sorry, Ro,” she apologizes and he doesn’t know why.  Or why her voice sounds like she’s been screaming until its raw.  Or why her eyes have lost every single one of their stars.  It’s a long, low throbbing pain through him, one that radiates up from his right arm and across his chest like spider veins, pounds hollow and dry in his lungs.  He can hear it in his ears, thrumming, whispering, weeping.  He tries to take her in his arms but all he manages is one arm, barely lifting off the ground before its too heavy and thuds back into place.  He's the Earth and she's the moon and he can't break free of his own weight and gravity to reach her any more.  He watches the clouds spin across her eyes and his heart twists and rolls in his chest, swells and constricts.  The heat moves over his skin like a desolate desert wind and bone winter chill follows it.  Her eyes -

oh God.

Her eyes.

He knows those eyes and the panic chases through his empty chest like a wolf in a dead winter forest, howling.  She leans down and her lips touch his face, scatter kisses across it, gentle as rain, sweet as stars.  His cheeks, the bridge of his nose, his forehead, his chin, his jaw, the edge of his mouth.  He knows what she’s doing and his good hand manages to lift enough to catch her hair.

No.  No.  God no.  Please, God, no.  No.  Leese.

In everything they’ve done, in everything they’ve been through -

she’s never said goodbye to him before.

Her lips linger at the edge of his and he feels the exhale of the words against his skin.  So hot, so cold.  The moon sails over the sky of a dead world.

“Forgive me, Ro.  The infection is killing you.  I can’t - please, I can’t...”

She leaves strands of her hair, silver and midnight, between his fingers, gone in a record scratch moment, as if time has fractured between her holding him and the moment she’s at the door.  The other denizens of their cell crouch against the walls and try not to breathe.

“Haggar.”  The moon’s voice calls through the window slate of the door.  A fist hits the metal.  A Samhain drum beat.

“Haggar.”

Thrum.

_“Haggar.”_


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ghosts aren't always a bad thing. Sometimes we need them with us even when they're not. A chapter for memories and the present. Shiro has a new arm but at what cost?

_“I saw what happened.”_

_He looks up from where he’s slouched on the bench, bent forward, arms over his thighs, wrists loose - and sees black.  Black eyes, black hair.  He knows her.  The lunar girl, the one from the moon colony.  She’s quiet but he’s noticed that whenever there’s a problem, she’s there.  Like now.  He smiles. What else is he supposed to do?  Everyone in their class saw that.  Saw him wreck the flight simulation because he couldn’t make the turn in time.  She has very long, very pale hands.  He watches them link together in front of her, in front of him.  He opens his mouth to say something casual, pride hurting, skill hurting, but knowing you didn’t show that kind of thing, knowing that self-depreciation and sportsmanship is what is called for, no matter how much his assurance in his own skill is protesting, when she says:_

_“The torque is off.  Everyone else is too slow so it doesn’t bother them.  The yoke couldn’t keep up with your movements the way a ship would.  Maintenance is going to fix it.”_

_She gives a small, embarrassed little smile and a half shrug and then she’s gone, a swish of hair and the funny way she moves her feet, as if she has to consciously plant them to makes sure they stay down, continuing down the hall to wherever her next class is, leaving him blinking after her, frowning._

_The next day the training instructor announces that the simulation’s been upgraded.  Shiro aces the test flight._

 

* * *

 

 

“-sucked the life out everything!  Nothing but an empty shell!  I saw!  They swallowed everything!  Nothing was left but dust!”

New prisoners come and go in steady rotation through the dark shadows of the cells and Shiro learns about the world outside, the universe outside, though them.  What he hears is a universe gone mad.  What he hears are nightmares.  The Galra war machine is something horrifying, voracious, insatiable, spreading like a disease, devouring everything in its way, snuffing out stars.  He sits, compacted tight around the horror his arm has been replaced by, mind swimming in and out of the pain of adjusting to it and he tries to distract himself from the fact that he's had so much more than just his arm ripped away from him.  He'll drown if he doesn't.  Drown in his loss and - he can't.  He _won't_.  Learning.  Knowledge.  It’s always been his escape.  Now he needs it to be his weapon too.  Listening to the new prisoners weeping their stories, raving them, screaming - Shiro learns.  

“The Druids have always been energy feeders but not like this... not like this!  This wasn’t one attack, one death.  This was my whole city!  There aren't enough Druids in the entire universe to drain a city but - I.  I watched it from the air. Some kind of weapon!  It spread out over the ground and everything it touched - the life drained right out it.  Plants, people, animals, even buildings!  We were supposed to be safe behind the shield - _they_ were supposed to be safe!  _My family_ \- !“

 

* * *

 

 

_“Moon cakes!”  She holds out the little wrapped box in her hands and he shoots a sharp, quick glance at her face, wondering if she realizes how potentially mock worthy that is considering where she comes from.  Her eyes curve for him and, he swears, he sees one wink, so fast he might be making it up.  The smile stumbles over his own lips before he can realize it and she smiles back.  He takes the package with a little bow that she returns automatically, pale hands folding in front of her.  “I make them every year.  For everyone that can’t go home for the holidays,” she says with a shrug.  
_

_Shiro has flight trials and the only time they run is over the holiday break.  It will be his first year away from his family for the new year and its been a quiet weight inside his chest.  He has to do this, advanced courses are only offered if you pass the trials, and he’s aiming for a top position in the graduating class, needing that spot to keep moving forward toward his dream of the stars.  His family understands.  It’s just - quietly, privately lonely.  And something, deep inside him, whispers that he should get used to that feeling.  The program doesn’t get easier about free time the higher you climb.  The job doesn't get easier after graduation.  She smiles as his ‘thank you’ and -_

_'every year’ she said..._

_She makes moon cakes because she gets left behind at the Garrison every year, watching as everyone else goes home and she stays…_

_“Want to get noodles with me tonight?  St. Elmo’s is open late.”_

_When she laughs and says yes… it’s not quite as quietly lonely as it was before._

 

* * *

 

 

The guards have a set pattern.  Shiro memorizes it.  He memorizes the sound of the click of their feet when they manhandle him back to his cell after a session in the Arena, precise when his own steps stagger and scrape.  He memorizes it when they lead him out to his next fight, nerves singing with tension and dread, mouth dry.  He memorizes it when they cull him off for ‘maintenance’ on his arm, new, painful additions and corrections that usually leave his throat raw from screaming and his whole right side searing with pain.  He memorizes it, through a hazy mind, when they drag his limp body back to his cell afterward to toss him in, leaving him to fever dreams of pain and white hair.  They’re automatons, they don’t break their routines.  Drones.  He memorizes the patterns, the safe points, the traps, the moments of opportunity, and each ship transfer grounds his conviction in the patterns.  His finger taps, day and night, until he almost does it in his sleep, click of his metal finger on the floor of his cell matching the click of darker things in his nightmares.  Mark their steps, mark their turns.  Ingrain the habit in himself.  Know your enemy and know yourself.

 

* * *

 

 

 _Lisa loves the water.  No.  Lisa loves being_ under _water.  It’s part of their weightless training, in the deep end of the Garrison pool with their oxygen tanks on their backs.  She sinks faster than anyone, fast as a dropped stone.  It's alarming the first time he watches it happen.  Her bones, moon born, are more fragile than his and she’s had treatments her entire adolescence, adding density and strength to them simply so she can tolerate Earth’s gravity.  She's had a lot of body modifications to survive in Earth's gravity.  She’s never said a thing about pain and she keeps up with him in cardio.  Other than her height and her pale skin its easy for him to forget where she was born.  Except during weightless training._

_She doesn’t need it.  She swims graceful circles around the rest of them the first time they actually experience zero-G and doesn’t have any of the nausea most of the rest of them, Shiro included, do.  She’s completely at home bouncing along in reduced gravity, so much so that he watches her once they’re back to normal gravity, worried, waiting for her to slip up and give away how much the weight of his home planet’s gravity must bother her.  Except she catches him at it and tugs gently at his bangs and tells him to stop even though he never said what he was doing in the first place._

_But, she always seems to glow when she’s underwater and whenever there’s pool, and later, open water training, he can never keep up with her.  And her eyes never stop shining  She says that growing up in space is growing up empty.  That lack of gravity outside the domes of her home is all about being alone, all about feeling small and pointless.  Most lunars are considered superstitious and most of them believe in God.  Lisa says its because, that far away from everything and everyone, its so quiet you can hear something so much greater than anything your mind can understand that you can’t help but believe.  Space is about being alone with forever.  Water though… water, Lisa says, is about coming home and being embraced and surrounded and cradled forever._

_They end up getting their open dive certification together and most of their vacations, before and after they graduate, end up being somewhere they can swim._

 

* * *

 

 

 _Voltron_.  The first time he hears the word, it's wailing.  Denial.  There's a new group of prisoners from a destroyed planet that the Galra are tearing apart a piece at a time looking for - Voltron.  Listening for more doesn't help and he can’t even get a straight answer when he breaks his silence and asks, scaring all of them.  The fugitives from the doomed planet have no idea what a Voltron is or why the enemy are looking so determinedly for it.

But the Galra do want it.  That soon becomes horrifying apparent.  The Galra want it badly enough to rip whole worlds apart like rotten pulp between their claws.  Searching.

The stream of prisoners for the Arena, and the beasts he fights in it, pick up after that.  The sessions with the witch last longer, fine tuning his arm until its a constant fire of nerves he has to fight through to survive his bouts in the Arena.  And the word spills from more mouths, curses and confusion, encased in tears, spit or blood.  _Voltron._   The Galra search for their obsession expands - 

and Shiro starts hearing whispers of familiar sounding stars.  

 

* * *

 

 

_“No,” she’s laughing, in his arm, looking up at him without a single shadow in her dark eyes.  They’ve been rooming together for years now, dorm mates so comfortable with each other by this point that he does their laundry because she has a habit of turning everything pink and she does the cooking because he has a tendency to lose track of time and set things on fire.  She’s matched him, all these years, pace for pace, right next to him through the fierce competition for coveted spots in the exclusive fighter pilot program.  Aiming for the space that’s her birthright just as fiercely and single-mindedly as he’s been chasing his destiny to the stars.  They’ve wrestled the physics of astronomy together, pulled all-nighters that lasted all week, bailed out under-classmen and tucked blankets over each other when one of them has finally collapsed somewhere in the apartment in exhaustion.  They’ve been each others speed dial for drunk texts, ‘where are you now?’, ‘on the way home, could you pick up some - ?’ and quiet ‘I need help’.  She indulges his love of bad b-movies.  He lets her drag him to art shows.  They’ve both shown up with ice cream and board games to help each other through romantic breakups with significant others until they both stopped having significant others.  Becoming Garrison instructors between shuttle runs has only changed the amount of time they have together but not anything about their living arrangements or the way they are with each other.  He’s gone further, done more - but she’s always been right behind him, safety net, shadow and guiding star home.  But now he was taking a coveted top spot and going further and longer away than he ever had before -  
_

_and she was in his arms, laughing.  Reaching up to tenderly tug on the tuft of hair that always hung over his forehead.  
_

_“Do you think I’d let you go to Kerberos alone?  Who do you think is going to be your co-pilot, Ro?”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How much of yourself do you sacrifice for someone you love? 
> 
> She’s traded herself away for him, body and soul. All things come to an end.

Something’s broken.  He’d heard it snap, during his last fight.  Desperate, almost out of his mind feral, almost dead, tossed hard into one of those concrete pillars, and he’d heard something snap.  Not the sharp, high snap of a rib, not the lower, thicker snap of a leg bone, just a small, almost invisible snap, that he felt somewhere in his head more than his body, distinctly alarming and yet almost lost in the roar of blood through his ears, adrenaline past his eyes.  He’d won that fight, eviscerated his opponent to the roar of the crowds and then passed out himself, last view the rapidly approaching open rib cage of his enemy as the world spun black and he took a head dive.

When he wakes up, he’s alone in his cell.  They always leave him alone in a cell these days and he’s not sure if its because he’s too valuable, or too dangerous, to be left with unknown variables.  He’s still wet from the buckets of water they always throw over him at the end of a fight, dressed in a new uniform which only means his old one had been too ruined for use, that he’d potentially had some healing done on him even if his aching body doesn’t feel like it, mouth full of a foul taste like rot and -

and his arm is glowing.

His arm isn’t supposed to glow.  Not outside of the Arena.  It has a locking mechanism built into it, one that deactivates it the second he passes through the Arena gates, leaves nothing but a useless dead-weight hanging painfully off his shoulder.  Except this time… it’s glowing in the dark of his cell and his eyes widen with a bit of horror as he stares at it.  It’s a cancer, a Frankenstein’s monster body part melded onto his own, a Lovecraft horror that doesn’t belong - but it’s also his salvation.  His other soul’s devil deal, his survival in this world of nightmares and monsters and - he curls his fingers after a moment and they curl on the glowing hand as well - maybe, his ticket out of this place.

He refuses to wonder if the snap he’d heard had been inside the arm - or inside his head.  It doesn’t matter.  Because his hand still slices the edge of the bottom of the door open, where he knows the sensors won’t trigger an alarm and it still melds the piece back in place enough for a careless walk-by to miss.  He knows the sentries routine, he knows their patterns, his arm won’t shut off, won’t stop glowing - but it can still keep time with a finger beat and he runs on silent feet down passageways and empty side rooms, stopping, starting, running all out, measuring steps in time with the inner metronome that keeps him locked in the drones marching patterns.  For the mammoth size of Galra ships, there are very few living, breathing beings on board them.  He knows that’s important information, but not immediately and so he runs.

They’ve taken him off ship in shuttles often enough.  He knows where they keep them.  His path doesn’t take him that direction.  Not yet.  Someone had sold their soul for his eldritch arm - and he is going to get them back.  It doesn’t matter that every second he isn’t escaping is another sliver carved off his chance at freedom.  He needs to get home, back to Earth, because he recognized the stars the last time he’d been dragged past a window and he knows what that means.  He knows his duty.  He does.  But he’s already lost Matt and Commander Holt and he isn’t going to - won’t let himself - lose his copilot as well.

He knows where they keep her.  He knows because, sometimes, when he’s strapped down to the table, purple runes glowing, clawing at his soul and his mind, while a witch hunches over his arm and hones it, chuckling in triumph over it, when the pain claws at the inside of his brain and runs nails over the interior of his stomach - his screams aren’t the only ones he hears.  There has been a duet sometimes, a secondary, higher pitched set of screaming that claws up the sides of his deeper ones and weaves between.  She’s still alive.

He’s going to get them both out of this nightmare.

He slows though, as he get nearer the part of the ship that stops being ship and turns into hell.  Slows because, while he knows the witch must be off ship thanks to the fact she hadn’t tinkered on his arm after a fight like the last one, he knows the bird skull heads might still be here and he knows they’re dangerous to him in so many ways.  And - he slows because the smell from the room they always strapped him down in has soaked outward, even as far out as the hall he’s currently in, replacing sharp metal and recycled dead air with something far more organic.  His stomach roils and then clenches and he feels sick.  Like vomiting.  Feverish with fear, sweat across his skin and his body fights him.  Because that smell, that blood and fear and gore, that underlay of corrupted ozone and sharp herbs and astringent liquids - his body knows what that smell means.  And his very muscles lock up to keep him from walking willingly into that horror.

But - Lisa is there.  

He would walk into hell, if it was following her.

It’s like walking through liquid air, getting his body to the room he knows is seared inside his soul, but he makes it.  And its empty, as he slinks in.  Something must have called the witch and her ghouls elsewhere and he doesn’t have enough of his humanity left to feel sorry for whatever lost souls that was, not when it buys him time here.  He creeps across the room, sticking to the walls, feeling like a plague rat, fighting to keep his eyes from darting to the table in the middle of the room, the rotten honeycomb overhead lighting, the marks carved into the floor.  The glow of his arm sends alarming shadows across the walls.  He makes it to the right door though, listens against it and lets himself imagine that he hears movement inside, soft and furtive.  He wants to whisper something, give a warning - beg for the sound of her voice again - but the room that has swallowed up so many of his screams steals sound from him now too.  It doesn’t steal the strength from his arm though and the arch he cuts in her door isn’t meant to be hidden again.  He doesn’t know what they’ve done to her, whether she’ll be able to walk out on her own or not, whether - 

whether they’ve attached anything to her.  So he needs the opening to be big enough that he can carry her out.  He catches the seared metal as it falls, keeps it from thundering down onto the slick floor, setting it down instead and he steps onto and over it, crouching a little as he moves into the cell.  Darkness pours out over him, tangible and formed, like hungry corrupted fog.  His skin shivers in revulsion where it touches him.  He smells blood and fear and rage.

“Leese - “ it chokes up in his throat and a part of his brain is frantic, desperately trying to tell him to run, that he doesn’t know she’s the one being kept in here, that anything could be living in this inky darkness, that he’s in danger.  _Run, run, **run!**_   Whatever is in here, it isn’t his Lisa.  It isn’t anything his mind wants to see.  He stands his ground.  Raises his arm so the glow falls into the dark corners of the small cell.  Something stirs in response

and he sees white hair.

The cry of betrayal catches in his throat and his mind blanks for a second.  A second is all the witch needs, moving like death, like the break of a bone, like winter shadows over the moon.  He’s flat on his back on the corrupted floor before he even realizes it, her weight bearing him down, heavier than anyone her size has a right to weigh, dusty saffron scent filling his nose, mind melting into a screaming animalistic mess and her teeth are a wolf’s teeth, sharp and lean at his throat.  His human hand scrabbles at the stone floor, trying to push him away, drag him to safety and his other hand - 

his other hand knows its purpose and lays at her throat, a white hot blade of promise and pain.  

In the purple glow of his hand, her skin is moon pale white.

His heart shatters inside of his chest.

“Lisa.”

Of course she’s heavy.  She’s had bone reinforcement all of her life.  Of course her hair’s white.  It had already been turning when she’d still been with him.  But she’s never moved so fast before, not even with all her natural grace and strength and 

her teeth have never been sharp incisors and canines.

“Leese…” his corrupted hand falls back, dead on the floor.  The glow goes out of it like a snuffed out candle.  He can feel her body trembling, where its hunched over his larger one, pinned him to the ground.  Her teeth don’t leave his throat, don’t relax, but they don’t finish grinding down either.  He can’t see her, can’t see anything beyond bleached bone white hair but he knows the feel of her body, her hands on his chest, her long legs tangled with his.  _He knows her._   And his vision blurs as his eyes fill up with tears, as he lays passive under her.  She has always been his weakness and she has always known that better than anyone.

“I’m so hungry,” it whispers out of her, shaking and frightened and disgusted.  Her lips brush the skin of his throat and he shivers too.  Her next words prove she knows him.  “Ro… I’m so hungry.”

“Not for food,” he guesses it and his voice breaks.  She’s still pinning him, still clinging to him with clawed fingers and sharp nails, still hovering dangerously close to his throat with those suddenly sharp, sharp teeth.  And he remembers all the rumors, the whispers, the screams.  Druids drink energy, suck the life out of their victims.  She doesn’t answer but her nails tighten on him and her slender body shakes hard, just once.  Her open mouth presses to his throat and she inhales long and deep, dragging the smell of him into her lungs.

How much of yourself do you sacrifice for someone you love?  

She’s traded herself away for him, body and soul.

“Take it,” it comes out short, quiet.  Without hesitation.  His human hand lifts, finds her hip, pulls her down closer against him and he closes his eyes so the last thing he’ll be aware of won’t be organic corrupt lighting above or bone hair below.  With his eyes closed, she feels the way he remembers, fits against him the way he remembers, is all sweet curves and lean strength the way he remembers.  He swallows and his other arm moves, surprising him that its still active despite having stopped glowing.  It curls around her shoulders and holds her close against him.  “Take it and get out of here.  Take it and go home.  Warn them.  Lisa, you have to warn them.”

She shakes her head against him, rubbing her face back and forth against his throat and he feels it when her lips began pressing her goodbye kisses to his face again.  He doesn’t let go, he isn’t going to let her leave him this time.  He isn’t going to lose her again.

“I love you,” she whispers it against his skin.  Finally saying what they’ve both always known, what, he knows, she already knows about him as well.  Because her lips finally cover his, for the first time, one slim hand lifting to cup his chin, and she pours her heart and soul into her kiss, honey and fire.  He feels her tears across his face as she kisses him.  As he kisses her back.

As he feels her stealing his life out of him, drinking it from the cup of his mouth, drawing it out in sunlight gold strands and swallowing it down her own slender throat.  Under her lips, he smiles weakly.

And then the world skips sideways, like a broken record scratch, and he’s tumbling across a slick metal surface, black fog dissipating around him as he hauls himself desperately to an elbow.  His chest feels hollow, his _bones_ feel hollow, as if something has sucked him dry or blown through him hard enough to scour everything clean.  Lisa is on the ground next to him, movements all wrong and disjointed, skipping time, as she pushes herself up with her arms from the floor, all white hair without a trace of the starlight darkness he’s always loved.  His eyes dart around the room, feeling light headed, and he realizes - 

they’re in the hanger bay.  And there is a ship, one of their small transports capable of making limited wormhole jumps, behind him.

There’s no way they’re going to go without being noticed for long now.  He staggers to his feet, finds he’s close enough to key the ship open, that his metal arm still works, and then he turns back and leans down to pull Lisa to her feet.  She makes it as far as her knees and, through her white hair, her beautiful brown eyes are ringed with gold.  Her hands find his arms.

“I can’t go back, Ro.  I will eat them all.”

“You’ll have me,” whether he means he’ll be her restraint or her meal, he doesn’t even know.  All he knows is that he won’t leave her behind in this hell, not now, not ever.  Her dark eyes soften for him and he watches her whole face follow.  Alarms start to blare, echoing loud in the vast metal space of the hanger. 

And she sadly smiles at him.  His eyes go wide.

“ _No!_ ”

But she’s faster than him, so much faster.  Her hand reaches, catches his forelock and he feels her pull something out of him along those strands.  Something horrible and precious and necessary until its golden in her palm.  White hair hangs across his eyes and he almost doesn’t notice the change as he stares at her in horror.  She lifts her white hand and swallows the light down her hungry throat.  Her eyes spill entirely golden as they fill with it.  And his mind, buzzing in sudden, hollow horror, empty where it shouldn’t be, wails after something precious beyond words stolen away.  Her palm finds his chest and he’s suddenly flying across the room, into the transport as black laced with gold swirls in the palm of her hand.

“Go,” its a command.  “I will buy you the time.”  There’s something else she should say, something on the edge of his tongue to say, but there is only the hollow blank where the words would have been and the need to follow her order.  To escape.  To warn Earth.  And still, he hesitates.  Something horrifying and purple is forming inexpertly in her cupped hands as the doors to the bay open and sentries pour out.  He can take those, he knows he can.  But - something dark with a bird’s skull for a head steps out of a shadow and his chest shudders and he watches as more of them come, stepping from their own darkness into the bay.  The woman with the white hair turns her purely golden eyes on him one last time and her voice is a sweet, longing cry deep in the hollow of his chest.

“Takashi… _go!_ ”

Her hands with their off balance orb of electric gold laced purple come down on the floor and the world explodes outward.  The force of it knocks him backward into the ship and the doors seal automatically as the integrity of the bay is compromised.  Mind fuzzy, reeling and unable to focus, his training takes over for him.  Throws him forward into the pilot’s seat, gets the engines online more through luck and logic than understanding.  There’s another explosion that send his ship skidding across the deck and his frantic game of elimination managed to get the engines on full bore.  The steering is easy and the third, and last, shuddering explosion, smaller than the others, tips him out of the broken force field between the hanger and space.  The ship breaks clear, spins wildly, and he fights it for control.  Catches it just before it careened into one of the  fins of the large cruiser.  He brings it up and around and there’s a great blank in the lights in the area around the bay his ship has just fallen out of, flickering damage he’s already too distant to see the details of.

But there is a star screen on his dash, waiting for him to put in coordinates, a destination.  Home.  Its backward but he recognizes the stars being displayed.  Leo, he thinks, which would make that star Wolf - and if that’s Wolf, than that dwarf would be Benard’s and if it is - if it is, he can find his way home.  His fingers tap the screen to no response but then the fingers start to glow.  He hadn’t even realized which arm he was using.  But the glow spreads across the panel and -

there.

There’s the right star cluster.  And beyond that - home.  The interface between his hand and the screen connects -

and the ship accelerates, knocking him back into his seat hard enough to threaten to crack ribs.  His mind is a mess, jumbled and screaming.  He can’t think straight, can’t concentrate, can’t focus beyond the immediate but he remembers that much.  Earth.  He has to warn them.  Something horrible has happened.  Something horrible is coming.  Something that swallows stars.

Something that swallows the moon.


End file.
